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Twitter
has struck a huge advertising
partnership that businesses large and small should pay attention
to. Under the deal, Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), a
subsidiary of French advertising conglomerate Publicis, and
Twitter will pool their resources on a number of analytics
projects over the course of multiple years. Starcom represents
major brands including Microsoft, Samsung, Walmart and Coca-Cola.

1. The deal is all about data.
Twitter's interest in SMG isn't just brand-deep. The considerable
reach of SMG's clients will serve as a test for what Twitter says
it really wants to know -- namely how consumers are engaging with
content on its platform.

Twitter intends to mine a massive haul of analytics out of its
new partnership. The trends that emerge from that wide swath of
data -- particularly the anatomy of a successful, engaging
Twitter ad -- will in turn be made widely available via public
reports on best practices and engagement insights -- relevant
tips for any brand navigating Twitter's fickle social
waters.

2. Fine-tuning the 'when.'
Your company may know who to communicate with and what to say,
but on the ever-ephemeral social network, that might not cut it.
Twitter wants to leverage the data from this big deal to help all
brands crack that other more delicate W -- the when. The realtime
social network has a vested interest in helping its advertisers
serve up the most engaging content possible. That starts with
being in the right place at the right time, Twitter says.

3. Twitter isn't playing favorites.
The SMG deal is nonexclusive, so the rapport between the two
companies won't keep Twitter from striking up other partnerships.
While the two may work on projects such as custom mobile surveys,
Twitter's promoted products suite will remain the same across its
ad client base.

4. TV and Twitter: a perfect pair?
If it wasn't already apparent, Twitter and television are an
advertising match made in heaven. Twitter's unprecedented
collaboration with Nielsen and its recent acquisition of
entertainment analytics group Bluefin Labs all point to the
TV-Twitter combo as a lucrative frontier for advertisers. Twitter
can now reap the benefits of its SMG data harvest using the
analytics tools it's cooked up with Nielsen and Bluefin to
elevate brands at large.

5. Small businesses won't be left out.
Twitter maintains that its core users are small businesses -- and
it won't be ignoring them when it comes to advertising on the
social network. The company expects the recent launch of keyword targeting -- which gives
advertisers the ability to reach users based on keywords in
their tweets and tweets they've recently interacted with -- to
prove useful for small businesses in particular. Since they
can utilize the same tools as the big fish in SMG's lineup,
large-scale insight around keyword targeting should have a
potent trickle-down effect for the little guy, too.